


Too Much

by pridecookies



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Angst and Drama, Angst and Feels, Blood Mage Hawke (Dragon Age), Break Up, Break Up Talk, M/M, Mage Hawke (Dragon Age), and he knew it to begin with but like????, and it didnt work out and it never would???, because he wanted to cling to joy in any form???, fenhawke - Freeform, i dont know how to tag this, mother fucker just did it anything????, my son loved him SO much????, so much????, yeah it hurts though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:06:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29358447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pridecookies/pseuds/pridecookies
Summary: Fenris leaves Hawke and he doesn't... take it... well.
Relationships: Fenris/Hawke (Dragon Age), Fenris/Male Hawke
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	Too Much

**Author's Note:**

> My son loves hard and breaks harder, RIP me. Look at this anxiety.

Eyes open, ceiling lit with warmth, fire crackling in his peripherals. Sleep too thick on his lids. Everything was warm and whole and released. No, not warm. Not really. There was a space to the right, fire didn’t touch it. Warmth didn’t touch it. Cold, empty. Fenris was there when he fell asleep and now he wasn’t. Breathing in, deeply, Malcolm noted that the room didn’t feel clean anymore. It wasn’t dirty, it just felt heavy. Too warm, probably. Fire needed to be stifled a bit. It burned too bright, too hot. Malcolm put a hand out, absentmindedly searching for form in the bed and finding it void, his fingers reached for nothing. Ghosts in the sheets.

Closing his lids, harder, forcing sleep from his eyes, he sat up. There was tension in his shoulders, fresh contractions in the muscles from the terror in his touch that night. He felt aimless, unsure. Every little thing was questioned and confusing. Every touch new in the wrong way, his fingers were twitching as they brushed lyrium branded skin. It was like he had never done it before, there was a shake in him. Afraid of doing something wrong. 

Hand in his hair, stimulating a mind with fog resting inside his skull, he looked toward the fire that was too warm and saw a silhouette. Fenris was standing with a hand on the mantle, leaning against it, aged overnight. That was it, wasn’t it? Fenris walked like a man too old, ancient in youth. Shoulders hunching forward with weight unknown, deeper than deep. He was dressed, his armor was singular. It was a shape Malcolm knew well. It wasn’t what Malcolm was reaching for when his fingers searched for form. He would have preferred the void to the silhouette of someone ready to leave. Fenris was leaving, he was waiting to tell him goodbye. Why?

“Fen,” he murmured, swallowing. “What is it.”

The elf didn’t speak, not at first. He leaned further into the mantle, that aged unease made present in ways it wasn’t before. Years piled on in seconds. 

“I’m sorry,” Fenris said, silence broken by words Malcolm didn’t understand. 

“You’re sorry,” the mage repeated, watching him intently. Something was very wrong. Slipping out of sheets, crimson that hadn’t felt cruel before, he pulled on his house pants and stood in an attempt to approach, to ease. To make better whatever he broke. He walked over to Fenris with a hand outstretched for his face and the elf flinched back.  _ He... flinched... back.  _

“I—” Malcolm said, the words cut off by a throat too dry to form them. Awkwardly, he coughed. Laughter, weak and empty and hollow and joyless fell from his lips. “That bad, hm?”

“It was fine,” Fenris said quickly, his tone defensive. 

Malcolm’s mouth formed into an  _ o _ shape, his eye twitched.  _ Fine _ . There was a dismissiveness in that, dissatisfaction, disappointment. He blinked rapidly, eyes looking at a corner of the room that held a bookcase. He didn’t know why he was looking there, he just needed somewhere to look. There was a feeling washing over him that was unfamiliar but familiar, its context foreign. Heat of the wrong kind, not conforming, burning in a way that was painful. Shame. He was ashamed. Didn’t perform. Didn’t satisfy.

“Fine,” he repeated, the words barely breathed. Repeating seemed to be all he could do, a mockingbird not a hawk. Fenris closed his eyes, tightly, fists clenched at his side. 

“Malcolm,” he said quietly, “It really isn’t that. I promise.”

“Okay,” the mage said, swallowing, throat thick, “What is it then.”

“I had flashes,” Fenris sighed, rubbing his forehead, pacing slightly in front of the fire and standing in the middle of the room. Illuminated by a different light now, no longer the warmth of a fire but cold moonlight. Clear, illuminated by an open balcony door, a place where a bird could perch and look over his cage, high in Hightown, wishing he were lower. Safe once. Stained now, he worried. It just felt strange. Everything felt uneasy.

Moving a hand through his hair, acutely aware of a feeling in his skin that sat like a tingle, panic setting in. Why, he didn’t know. It was the room. Something felt wrong in the room. The air was the wrong color somehow. Why? 

“Flashes,” Malcolm repeated again. Maker, that was all he was good for. Repetition, like a child. 

“Memory, pieces of my life before. It was there, I could see it,” Fenris’ voice broke slightly, strangled by what he was reaching for, empty air in his fingers when he did. “I saw it all and then it was gone,” his voice grew quiet, deflated. The years were being set on his back, like concrete blocks, one by one. Malcolm was watching them placed there, the elf’s shoulders slightly caving in more and more as he spoke. It hurt, he could tell. Fenris was in pain. So much of it. 

“Okay,” Malcolm whispered, a shudder in his voice, love echoed, “Talk it through with me.”

“No, you don’t understand. I can’t do this.”

Malcolm didn’t move, he felt it again. The air in the room, the wrong color. The air in the room felt wrong. Not too hot or too cold, just wrong. His skin was stone, stilled by fear, by the thing that was being declared. He didn’t understand, it was true. This was painful for Fenris, there were things that hurt him, that was why Malcolm was there. Heal it, heal something for once. Instead of bleeding it, staining it, breaking it, ruining it. Make things better. Love louder.

“Do what,” the mage muttered. 

“This. It’s too much.”

Fenris gestured between the two of them, loosely, defeated in every movement. Malcolm heard the words through water, plunged underneath it, eyes blurred by it. 

“I don’t understand.”

“I  _ can’t _ , Malcolm,” Fenris looked at him, brows pulled together in a wince.

“I don’t understand,” Malcolm said in the same tone as before, a perfect copy.

“I know you don’t,” Fenris said quietly, an apology held in his voice, “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t understand,” he said again, the words unchanging from the previous utterance. 

“Malcolm,” Fenris said, huffing out a breath, “There isn’t anything to understand.  _ I can’t _ .”

“You—” the mage choked, throat too dry again. No, this couldn’t. Can’t.  _ No _ . “You can’t?”

“I’m sorry, I thought—” Fenris sighed, a hand on a hip, voice small and frail, “I thought I could do this but it's all too much for me.”

“But you did,” Malcolm protested, his own voice quiet, unsure, panicked, “But... you already  _ did _ .”

“Please, don’t make this harder than it needs to be. I need you to understand.”

“It already  _ is _ , I don’t understand. You need me to understand but that’s what I’m trying to do. Understand. Shape this. It’s too  _ much _ ? It’s  _ been _ , we’ve  _ been _ —” his lips moved wordlessly, he paced slightly, eyes blinking, “We’ve  _ been _ , Fenris. We’re  _ here  _ now. It’s here. I’m here. We.”

Malcolm stepped toward him, blue reaching for a hollow green. The room felt wrong but the love was right, it wasn’t crooked or misplaced. It was present in the mage, always. Fenris stared at him, his brows furrowed and lips downturned in confusion and he stepped away. At that refusal, twice now, Malcolm had started to move erratically, his head twitching toward his shoulder in a wince, a strange impulse to protect from something. Perhaps from the way the air was wrong in the room. Blurred. He felt blurry, lines no longer sharp and clear and defined. Bones bending.

“I gave it to you, Fenris,” Malcolm said, words rushed and strained, “I gave it to you.  _ I can’t take it back.  _ It’s gone now, I can’t get it back. I gave it to you.”

“Gave  _ what  _ to me?” Fenris frowned, “The red cloth that—”

“Me,” Malcolm cried, “ _ Me _ . I can’t get  _ me  _ back. I already did it. Do you understand? I c-can’t get it back, it's gone now. You can’t t-take it and go. I won’t come back if you do, I can only do it once, I can’t do it again when I’ve done it.  _ It’s gone _ . Don’t—” his eyes blurred like the room, the sheen of tears pooling over quickly blinking lids. There was begging in his voice, a plea run ragged. “ _ Don’t take this piece from me _ .”

“This isn’t about  _ you _ , Malcolm,” Fenris said, jaw tightening, “This is about me.  _ I can’t _ .” 

“ _ It’s about both of us now _ ,” the mage hissed, pressing his hands against his chest, brows pitched downward sharply in a grimace, “It isn’t just about you,  _ I love you _ . That’s what that means, it isn’t just you. That’s the fucking point, it's not just you anymore, Fen.”

At that, Fenris stopped speaking or protesting. Apology turned to pity and Malcolm understood something with a horror running cold in his veins, shame sitting on his skin and constricting him. Whatever weight had sat on the elf’s shoulders, making him sink like that, he had passed it. It fell on Malcolm's lungs now, his chest compressed and in the silence of the room he thought he heard his ribs cracking under the pressure. It sounded like a frozen lake settling.

“Oh,” he gasped, mouth agape and eyes wide and filled with a hurt he didn’t expect when they walked into this room hours ago and fell on a bed he wanted to burn, “ _ Oh… _ Oh no.”

That was it, that was it. It wasn’t just a matter of  _ can’t  _ it was a matter of  _ didn’t _ . In the midst of misunderstanding, where a white fog sat with only lyrium light to show him he was still seeing at all, there was something to understand. He was too much, he was too much. Not loved. Just much. Drowning in too much, touching too much. Never the right amount. Malcolm wasn’t loved.

“Malcolm,” Fenris encouraged, weakly, “It isn’t you.”

“Then  _ what  _ is it?” the mage begged, understanding impossible to grasp. 

“There isn’t anything I can tell you!” Fenris cried, “ _ I just can’t! _ Sometimes you can’t and that is the only answer you can give. It is all I have to give you because it is all I have.”

Silence filled the room, its own color. Malcolm pulled at his hair, new tears forming. It wasn’t the loss now, it was the confusion. It was the inability to be granted an answer to  _ why _ . It was a cord unraveled and lingering in his eye line that he couldn’t cut, puzzles unsolved and unanswered, it was a brush on the back of his neck over and over and over again that never stopped. He closed his eyes, tight, shutting out the  _ why _ , the lack of conclusion, a frightening forever.

“I don’t understand,” he whimpered, “I don’t understand  _ why _ . I want to help you, why won’t you let me. Give me something I can hold, Fenris,” he held out his hands, fingers rigid and shaking, “I can’t hold something without a shape. I need to understand the  _ why  _ to hold this.

“That  _ is  _ the why, Malcolm,” Fenris said quietly, “Because I just... can’t. I’m sorry.”

“What did I do wrong,” he breathed,a whimper still present, “Did—” he stepped toward the elf with a hand out, “Did I hurt you?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“ _ What did I do wrong _ .”

“Nothing. You did nothing wrong. It just is. This is too much for me.”

“I—”  _ am too much,  _ Malcolm thought.

With an apology in his expression, eyes glossy, body deflated, Fenris walked to the door. He paused at the archway, a hand on the top, breathing slowly. 

“I just thought I could be happy for a moment,” he murmured, “Just a moment.”

Glancing back at Malcolm, he shook his head, his own shame on his shoulders, the young man that was old. With that, he closed the door behind him. The sound was so loud. It reverberated off the walls, painted the room in its echo. Malcolm’s eyes were wide, a whimper still caught in his throat. He didn’t understand. What happened. They were fine. Everything was fine. Months, months, months, spent fine. Then this. Not fine. Not loved.  _ Not _ . 

It would be broken now, love he made. Malcolm knew it, he felt it. Red painted once, ribbons wrapped around hands he wouldn’t hold again. The finality of not, the fragile fragments of was. Closing his eyes, slowly, he bent his knees and circled them with his arms, pulling them up to his chest. Trying to make himself small. He was too much, Fenris said. Wasn’t he? The man that stained, the man that branded things in the wrong way, the man that bled on everything to the point of all colors falling under his  _ much _ . The world wasn’t meant to be one color. 

So he pressed into himself, contracted as small as he could be, pushing the  _ too much _ back in. But the confusion still lingered, the fog pooling into the room and making it white. Light no longer warm but fogged and cold, grey like the morning, a lake in Lothering, everything misty and monochromatic and the same. He tried to squeeze his eyes tighter as if he could sew himself back together with the effort, the piece now gone, the piece he gave. If he pressed hard enough into himself, maybe he could force it back, find it again, force it back inside. Malcolm didn’t rock, he didn’t cry, he didn’t move, he didn’t whimper. He was silent and still. Trying not to be too much. Trying to be nothing. But he couldn’t.

Malcolm would change his shape if Fenris had told him what shape to change into, but ghosts had no shape at all. Ghosts held no color, ghosts were not something you could hold. 


End file.
